


please light me a match, i am afraid of the dark

by ladykestrel



Category: The Winner's Trilogy - Marie Rutkoski
Genre: Childhood Friends AU, Don't read if you're easily frightened by ghosts, Gen, Really dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3551498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladykestrel/pseuds/ladykestrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn’t know how long she’d lain there, with fists on either side of her head, but soon her father’s voice broke through the screams. Kestrel opened her eyes and saw his face. He was speaking to her, telling her that it was all right.<br/><i>Kestrel realized she had been screaming too.<i></i></i></p>
            </blockquote>





	please light me a match, i am afraid of the dark

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a really short, really happy neighbours AU, but this happened instead.

General Trajan did not know how to explain colonization to his eight-year-old daughter. Her mind was too young, and young minds did not care for such complexity. Kestrel had spent the entire journey to their newhome crying, hanging onto her mother’s sleeve. The general had left her to her tears. For him it was been the better option to let his daughter cry it out so she could move on faster. It was hard at first, adjusting to this new life and this new home when all Kestrel wanted was to return to her old one. The little girl cried almost every day for hours. Yet even that passed and Kestrel settled in better, the tears lessened.

Then her mother passed.

It was as if Kestrel had been collecting her tears inside a dam and her mother’s death broke the boundaries. Grief and loss erupted and fell in the form of salty wetness from the girl’s eyes. Kestrel hid in her new rooms, refusing to come out for hours. Sometimes a whole day would pass before she opened the doors to let a maid in. Meals were delivered to her, but Kestrel hardly even glanced at the food, choosing to instead bury her face into a pillow and let the sobs overtake her. Valorians did not have gods, but the girl wondered if there was someone somewhere whom she had offended. If there was something to be done to make it better, to bring her mother back.

But Kestrel was her father’s daughter and knew enough of the world to recognize the difference between leaving and dying. Leaving meant there was a slight chance of returning. Death was permanent, and she wished her mother had left instead.

Months went by and the general was growing restless. Kestrel had started coming down for breakfast and dinner, she had begun eating again, but the hollowness in her eyes was ever-present. His daughter had become a shell of a girl, split open, with the pearl or her soul ripped out. One day the general found Kestrel sitting on her mother’s piano bench. That was when he decided her grief had gone long enough. He decided to shape his little girl into a different shell - stronger, harder, unbreakable.

Combat lessons were not going well, however. Knives clanged and bones hit the floor of the weapon’s room. Sometimes the air would fill with a cry or the marble would be tainted with tears. It was obvious Kestrel was not a fighter. She did not have the heart for war, her body not meant for battle. Still, General Trajan pressed on and his daughter’s lessons continued. He was determined to make Kestrel a mighty warrior, a worthy successor. The man willed his patience to become unwavering stone.

Kestrel, on the other hand, had plans for her future too, and being a soldier in her father’s army was not part of them. Instead, she had developed a kinship to music. At first it had started out as a way to stay close to her mother, so she had sat at the piano for hours, stroking its sleek black and white keys. But then Kestrel had attempted to play. She discovered a thrill inside herself that urged her to go on, to play more. And she did. For hours, well into the night time, the little girl practiced and practiced. Music brought her back to herself, returned the color to her skin and the flush to her cheeks. Kestrel began to smile more. Her father thought it was because of the lessons. Kestrel let him believe what he wanted. Her pain did not disappear, however, the girl only found a way to transform her tears into melodies.

One night, several months after her mother’s passing, Kestrel awoke to music. It was a familiar tune, a lullaby Kestrel knew well - her mother hummed it to her at bedtime every night. The little girl, at first disoriented from slumber, leaped off her bed and hurried to find her mother. Kestrel stopped short in front of her room’s door when the fog of sleep lifted and her mind cleared. The music still played but it was not her mother’s doing. Her mother had been burned and her ashes now rested in an urn atop the library’s fire place. Still, it was strange. Kestrel had to find the source of the music. She went down to the music room, where the piano sat. All the while, the song grew stronger and stronger, until Kestrel was at the door, hand on handle, when a loud boom from the piano startled her. The girl turned and ran.

Kestrel flew past the estate’s front doors. She went past the barracks, past the slave quarters and straight to the stables. A light drizzle dampened her nightdress and slightly matted her hair. Entering, Kestrel heard the huffs and puffs of the horses. Their heavy breathing relaxed her, evened out her own frantic breaths. The girl went further inside the stables as her heartbeats stabilized. Here, away from the haunting music, Kestrel’s thoughts were beginning to clear. She had just about recovered and was ready to go back inside when a rustling shocked her anew. Kestrel yelled. 

“Shhh,” someone said. Kestrel fell back against one of the stables’ wall. A dark figure emerged from one of the stalls. It approached the little girl as she struggled to get on her feet. Kestrel’s eyes met a pair of bright ones that seemed to glow in the darkness of the stables. They drew closer. She recoiled. “Are you alright?” the figure asked.

“Wh-who are you?” Kestrel stumbled. “How did you get in here?”

“I work here.”

“Work here? But you’re a boy!” she exclaimed. He was a head taller than Kestrel, no doubt an year or two older, but still a child. 

“It doesn’t matter, so long I’m capable of labor,” he told her. It suddenly dawned on Kestrel who this boy was. She ought to have gone for her father or the housekeeper. 

“You have a curfew,” was what she said instead. The boy shrugged. “You’ll get punished for breaking it,” she pressed on. 

“Only if I’m found out.”

“I could tell my father. He would see to it himself.” Only one of those things was a lie.

“You shouldn’t be out here either. I could tell on you too.”

“Nobody would believe you.” Still, Kestrel dreaded what would happen if her father found out she had been outside at night, with a slave to keep her company. “All right, I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me. Deal?”

The boy eyed her warily. “Why should I believe you? You could be setting me in for a trap.”

“It’s your best bet. Take it or leave it.” The frightened little girl from before had given way to the general’s daughter. Kestrel slipped into the role like pulling on a pair of tight-fitting gloves. Even at eight years old, she was a force. Her father would not have nothing less.

“Fine,” the boy nodded. They went their separate ways. The next morning, Kestrel did not speak of the encounter. She did not mention the slave who had broken curfew to her father, nor to the housekeeper. She didn’t see the boy that day, but she looked for him. She asked her nurse, but Enai told Kestrel she had no business inquiring after slaves. The girl pursed her lips and said nothing more.

When Kestrel woke up that night, it was to her mother’s voice. Frightened, she followed it back to the music room, where it seemed to be most prominent. The voice was beckoning Kestrel to step in, to come and play. The girl ran away to the stables again. She could not hear her mother in there, nor the sinister note that had appeared in her voice. Kestrel’s people did not have gods, but she was starting to believe in ghosts. She remembered the stories Enai read to her and felt her bones shiver as Kestrel recalled the ones about vengeful spirits returning from the afterlife. But before fear could completely tide her over, Kestrel heard metal clanging. She stood up and curiously followed the noise all the way to the forge. Inside, a fire was lit and the air was warm with its radiating heat. Kestrel saw a hammer slam onto a glowing piece of metal, willing it to bend into shape. When it refused, a frustrated cry replaced the clangs.

“Somebody’s going to hear you,” Kestrel said. She hadn’t meant to startle the boy, nor to talk, but the words escaped her lips before she could reign them in. He let out a yelp and dropped the hammer, almost landing on his foot. The boy staggered back, his outstretched palm touching the scorching metal. His teeth bit back a cry. 

Kestrel reached out. “Let me see,” she said. The boy hesitantly unfurled his fingers and Kestrel turned the hand over to inspect for damage. She sucked in a breath when she saw the amount of reddening skin. Kestrel tugged at the boy. “I know what to do, but you have to come with me.”

The boy snatched his hand away. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Leave.”

“No.” Kestrel set her jaw the way she’d seen her father do when someone had displeased him. She tipped her chin in sign of authority, as if she was daring this boy to disagree with her. “You will do as I say.”

He sighed and went along. 

The two of them crept across the grounds, careful not to be spotted by the general’s soldiers, should someone wake and wander around. When they reached the front door of the estate, the boy struggled against Kestrel’s grip on his upper arm. She shushed him.

“I can’t go in there,” he protested.

“You can if I say so. There’s no one here to see, anyway.”

“I’ll get whipped if I get caught inside.”

Kestrel turned to look at him. There was fear in his pale eyes, painting them the color of storm clouds. Sizzling hot coals filled her stomach. She assured him no one would catch them. No one would know. She took the boy to the fountain in the entry way and instructed him to put his palm under. His breath hissed as burnt flesh met water, but the boy did not remove his hand. Kestrel told him to stay put, that she would be right back.

“What- Where are you going? You can’t leave me here!”

“I’ll only be a moment,” Kestrel promised. She went to retrieve a cloth from the kitchens. When she couldn’t find one within reach, Kestrel tore a long strip off her nightgown. The ripping fabric echoed through the room. The girl hurried back to the fountain, her little feet smacking against the marble tiles. The cloth was dipped into the cool water. Kestrel took it out after a few moments and squeezed it until it was little more than damp. The boy had started to remove his hand from the fountain.

“No!” Kestrel exclaimed, the room mirroring her voice like ripples in a fountain. “Rest it there for a little longer.” He did as instructed.

“Where did you learn to do this?” the boy asked.

“My father taught me. He said I needed to know how to treat battle wounds if I was to join the military.”

“When are you going to tell him you’re not going to?”

The girl’s head snapped up. “I never said that!”

“You didn’t have to.”

Kestrel stared at the boy in shock. How had he been able to see through her? Had she really been as translucent as the water’s surface? “You can take your hand out now,” she said, voice flat, devoid of feeling. She tugged his palm to her with a little more force than necessary and wrapped the strip around the burns. 

Kestrel was the first to speak again. “What’s your name?”

“They call me Smithy.”

“Is that your true name?”

“No.”

Kestrel waited. She tied the ripped fabric in a bow after she’d finished wrapping it. Her fingers let go. No response had come yet.

Finally, “It’s Arin.”

“You’re free to go now, Arin.”

His voice was thick with feeling, “Thank you.”

She did not respond. The girl walked away, ready to dispose of the nightgown.

Only when Kestrel was back in her rooms did she realize her mother’s voice had faded.

It returned the next night with a vengeance. 

Kestrel felt like she had been shaken out of her dreams by forceful, powerful hands. She wasn’t sure why she always went to the music room when she knew she’d only run away from it, but it was as if an invisible string had been tied around her and she’d become a puppet to whatever darkness lay behind the door. Kestrel hadn’t played the piano in three days now, too shaken to enter even in broad daylight. That room was strictly off limits, much like her father had warned her months prior. She hadn’t listened to him them, but she was listening now. Still, the girl went down to the music room. Still, she heard her mother’s voice more prominently than ever. Still, she whirled and ran for the stables.

He wasn’t there. Only the horses rested in their stalls. He wasn’t in the forge either. No fire had been lit; there was no one to stroke it if it were either. Kestrel should have felt relief. She should have been glad. Yet, where the relief was supposed to be, she found only dread and longing.

Her mother was singing now. She had followed Kestrel out to her hiding place in the stables. The song, Kestrel felt, was right beside her ear, but its soothing tone was gone, replaced by something vicious and cold. Higher and higher it went and the little girl could not bear it any longer. She burst out of the stables and ran into the orange grove near the slave barracks. The song had risen and Kestrel’s mother was now screaming in her daughter’s head. Kestrel fell on the grass and curled up in a ball. Her small hands covered her ears but it was of no use. She didn’t know how long she’d lain there, with fists on either side of her head, but soon her father’s voice broke through the screams. Kestrel opened her eyes and saw his face. He was speaking to her, telling her that it was all right. 

Kestrel realized she had been screaming too.

The general did not let Kestrel out of his sight until morning. He went as far as to sleep in a chair at her bedside in case the little girl started screaming again. He had demanded answers out of anyone who could give them, even from his own daughter who had still been in distress. Through her sour tears, the general’s daughter cut lie after lie on her teeth. She told her father she’d been having a bad dream, she’d sleepwalked outside and next thing Kestrel knew, she was awoken in a circle of drowsy, concerned faces. Her father seemed to believe her and Kestrel felt proud of her convincing act. After that, the house settled back to rest and the night once again fell under a blanket of silence. In the morning, nobody spoke of what had transpired the previous night. It was almost as if they had forgotten. Kestrel wished she could forget as well.

Kestrel went about her day as she usually would. Although, Enai dotted on her  more today than ever, and the girl desperately wished her nurse would stop. But there were some advantages, and when Kestrel stated she needed some air, she was quickly admitted to a walk on the grounds. Kestrel went straight to the stables.

He wasn’t there. His absence was a presence of its own.

Just before walking back to the house, Kestrel turned and headed for the forge instead. The air inside was scorching, a thousand summer suns gathered in one small building. Her father’s blacksmith carefully beat a sword in place as a young boy stood watch. The man was explaining the science of forging a weapon. Kestrel’s heart leaped in joy. She’d found Arin! As if he’d heard her thoughts, the boy’s eyes turned to meet hers. Arin gasped.

“Boy, you ought to pay attention!” the blacksmith scolded and the back of his hand met the side of the boy’s face.

Rubbing his cheek, Arin glanced back at Kestrel, his eyes as hard as the newly made sword. The elderly blacksmith still hadn’t noticed the girl standing by the forge’s door. Kestrel took one last look at Arin and closed it shut.

She didn’t want to return to the confines of the house, they stifled her too much, so Kestrel sat on the grass under the shadow of an orange tree. Were someone to happen upon her, they’d scold Kestrel for sitting on the dirty ground without a blanket. She couldn’t care less. Her back leaned against the tree trunk and Kestrel relaxed into her position. She must have dozed off because when she next opened her eyes a pair of hands was rustling her shoulder. Kestrel looked up to meet Arin’s steel gaze. 

“How is your palm?” she blurted out.

“It’s fine,” Arin responded. 

“Does it hurt still? We have a remedy that could help with that.”

“I don’t need it, Kestrel.” 

They didn’t say anything more. After a brief hesitation, Arin came to sit beside her, his eyes looking to the fruit up above. Kestrel stood and plucked an orange. After she’d finished peeling it, she handed half of it to Arin. They ate in silence. Then, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Kestrel dreaded that he would tell her he was sorry about that happened last night, that he was sorry she was so unstable a child. But what Arin said next startled her more than any haunting ever could.

“For not being there last night.”

Kestrel should have thanked him. 

She didn’t. 

Arin stood and walked away.

This time Kestrel anticipated the violent awakening. She’d come to expect it every night now. This time, the girl didn’t even bother going to the music room despite the string pulling her toward it. Kestrel went to the forge. Inside a fire had been lit again, and Arin stood over it. He stroked it gently like Kestrel sometimes stroked the piano’s keys. How she missed her piano, her music. How she longed for them. But so long as her mother haunted that room, Kestrel was too scared to set foot in it. Instead, she sat with Arin side by side and watched the flames cackle.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Kestrel asked. 

“I’m constantly surrounded by them.”

“Are you not scared of them?”

“It doesn’t matter. I still have to live with them.”

“How do you bear it?”

“What is this about, Kestrel?”

“My mother is haunting me.” 

That seemed to make Arin pause. He looked at the fire for a few moments before saying, “Mine does too.”

“Does she wake you up at night and scream in your head?” Kestrel’s voice came out eager.

“Is that why you were screaming last night?”

The fire cackled and spit.

“Yes.” Kestrel told Arin about her mother, how she had died, how she had come back from the afterlife. About the music room and how Kestrel has been afraid to go in there since. Arin listened and when Kestrel was done, he didn’t look at her like she was ill. His eyes were warm with understanding, with sympathy. Kestrel wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said finally. 

Arin shrugged. “I barely remember her.” His words were a desk with a false bottom, their true meaning hidden underneath. Kestrel kept silent.

During the day, Kestrel read and fought and slept. At night, she and Arin met at the forge or at the stables. He kept her company until the voice dwindled down and disappeared. Dark circles formed under Arin’s eyes, looking like fresh bruises, but he was still there every night, waiting. Both children were exhausted but Kestrel was afraid to sleep after dark, and Arin was content with staying up with her until dawn. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they sat in comfortable silence. Sometimes Kestrel picked an orange or stole sweet bread from the kitchens to share with Arin. A month passed and her mother’s presence seemed to have subsided. Kestrel still did not have the courage to go into the music room.

“I’ll go with you,” Arin suggested one night. That same night Kestrel played for him, for herself, for all the days she’d went without music. The songs she performed chased away all the screaming spirits. Arin had relaxed in a chair, his eyes closed. When time came for most of the house to wake up, Kestrel and Arin left the music room. The eight-year-old had never been so happy. Yet, Arin was distant, like he’d travelled all night while Kestrel played and had ended up far away from reality.

Life had gone back to normal and Kestrel was no longer plagued by the spirits of the dead. She began to play more and more, especially when her father was away on duty. Colours were more vibrant, the sun’s rays shined brighter. Kestrel longed to share it all with Arin. At night, she went out to the stables to wait for him but the boy never showed. Kestrel kept telling herself that she’d get up one more night, just one more night, and perhaps he’d come. He never did. Eventually she stopped waiting. Her lessons with Rax and Enai continued. While her fighting skills did not improve much, Kestrel could now speak Herrani fluently. She’d learnt to read and to write in their script as well. The rest was shut inside a box and buried deep inside the girl’s mind. 

Everything seemed to be flowing steady. 

Until it wasn’t anymore.

Her father had found out about Kestrel’s piano playing. He meant to have the instrument smashed to splinters. Kestrel was almost too late to stop him. Then, somehow, the general had also found out about Arin breaking curfew. He had the boy whipped into unconsciousness. 

Kestrel did not speak to her father for weeks.

(The day after Arin’s punishment, a cream had been waiting on his bed in the slaves’ quarters.)

Her mother’s voice returned. Kestrel faced it alone. More often than not did she wake up the household with her screams. Her father sent for healers, but even the most skilled practitioners could not help Kestrel. It was grief, they all said. It would pass, they reassured the general.

The girl stopped going to the music room. She’d locked it and hidden the key, as if that could lock away her mother’s ghost as well.

It got particularly bad one night when Kestrel was shocked awake by screams once more. When her eyes flew open, the girl saw a pale figure in the darkness. Her mother was waiting with sunken eyes, the skin around them rimmed with blue, bones sticking out and her hair clotted and wild, arms cut deep and dripping red. She smiled at her daughter, revealing bloody rotting teeth. Kestrel stifled the scream bubbling on her lips. With shaking limbs, the girl got out of bed. She flung open the door open with a clang and ran as fast as her feet could carry her. Panic was filling every bit of her body and Kestrel found it harder to see through the brimming tears. Two pairs of footsteps patted on the stone floor.

Kestrel didn’t know where to run to, so she went to the stables. She found an empty stall and bolted its door shut. Laughter had settled on the edge of her mind, but whether it was hers or her mother’s, Kestrel wasn’t sure. Backing up into a corner, the little girl sat in the hay with her knees pressed tight to her body. She cried while the dark spirit tried to pry the stall’s door open. When the lock rattled more and more, Kestrel’s tears streamed down harder. And, finally, when the door swung open, Kestrel screamed, fully expecting the horror of her mother’s corpse to greet her. Instead, soothing words came from a melodic voice. 

Arin.

His arms went around Kestrel, hugging her tightly. Her little fingers clutched at his shirt and her head buried itself in him as the tears fell down with a wicked force. “Shh,” Arin was saying. “You’re not alone.” Kestrel hiccupped and choked on her sobs.

“Where were you?” she demanded through wheezing breaths.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” Arin told her instead. It was not the answer she had been looking for, but Kestrel realized she believed in his words.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

Just as Kestrel’s mother finally caught up to her, Arin whispered, “It’s not your fault.”

The gruesome spirit shattered to a million pieces with a one final deafening scream. Kestrel’s tears slowed. Arin held her the whole night through and she fell asleep in his comforting embrace.


End file.
